


Change Is In Everything

by sahrmael



Series: Don't Know How To Reach You [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, Gen, I make myself sad, Originally posted to FF.net, Other, Post-Thousand Year Blood War, god help me i'm dying, i'm such a bitch for this ship, mayuri has feelings omf, nemuri is cute but she's a blabbermouth, really mad about how retsu died, the queen of kurohana is back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27288076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahrmael/pseuds/sahrmael
Summary: The war has taken much from many, and casts a frightening new burden upon the shoulders of Isane Kotetsu. Presiding now as Captain of the Fourth Division, she struggles to see what decency – if any – her late mentor saw in the likes of Mayuri Kurotsuchi. (Post-TYBW. Tie-in with all my old KuroHana fic.)
Relationships: Kurotsuchi Mayuri/Unohana Retsu
Series: Don't Know How To Reach You [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1992439
Kudos: 3





	Change Is In Everything

**Author's Note:**

> This year has been very taxing on my nerves, so these characters get to suffer, too.

To say that things have changed would be a dramatic understatement.

The war has taken much from them, and among the innumerable casualties and rubble lay peace of mind and comfort. Each day since the end of the war has been more strenuous than the last, with bodies turning up in mangled fragments along with any hope their comrades and families may have held onto.

Insane knows first-hand just how difficult the adjustment has been, having found herself abruptly thrust into the position of captaincy - if in name only - within mere hours of news of Unohana's demise. Details, while still sketchy, have largely determined her late captain's cause of death to be exsanguination by way of a rather grievous penetrating chest injury.

She recalls having been promoted as she works, tending to the most critical of her patients with a visible sweat upon her dark brow. Those who had survived the battlefield had been in attendance, as per protocol, and none had stood to voice their reluctance to accept her into their flock.

And that, quite plainly, had shocked her.

Brows knit together as she works, and while Isane is focused, she is also very much distant. She recalls a series of brief interactions with Unohana in which she had witnessed a less... _caustic_ side to one of the other captains. Certainly the least likely of the group to display any form of humanity.

She wasn't terribly sure before, but this war has done much to confirm her suspicions.

* * *

Immediately following her promotion to the Captain's seat, Mayuri Kurotsuchi had vanished. Reports from within the Twelfth Division were that he had absconded, unaccompanied, to the Living World, under the pretext of locating something new to occupy his interests. Isane had known better. He had been seeking a _distraction,_ not unlike the new captain herself.

Days after he'd been said to have returned, little Nemuri had been seen toddling down the streets of the Seireitei, oddly looking for something to occupy her time, as well. Isane had run into her that day, posed a query as to the whereabouts of her captain, to which the somber-eyed child had explained that she hadn't yet seen him, and was awaiting his summons. That, Isane thought, was unusual, even in regards to Mayuri's reclusive nature, for there was always some task he had set his assistant out to complete.

It was then that she dared to do what very few had the courage to, and that was to seek him out.

Nemuri had followed closely behind on their way to the Twelfth, silent but curious until it came time for her to lead the Fourth's new captain to the quarters of her own.

"I trust there is _reason_ for your intrusion, _Captain Kotetsu._ "

The edge in his voice hadn't been particularly startling. His mannerisms had always fluctuated between disgustingly civil - usually for the purpose of manipulation - and positively volatile. This was _very different_. In contrast to what Isane had come to expect, he had beckoned the child lieutenant to his side, rather tenderly placing a hand atop her head with a visibly heavy breath. She smiled rather briefly and glanced up at him with something that resembled fondness.

Everything Isane knew about him was, in that moment, reduced to nothing. Where his eyes often flickered with a muted excitement or fury, they were dull and disinterested. He seemed disorganized, unpainted, rigid even in comparison to his typical mannerisms, perpetually fixated upon the white haori draped carefully across Isane's shoulders.

His jaw _visibly clenched_ in mute disapproval.

She had said very little, making the excuse that, shortly, the Fourth's reserves of medication and other necessary supplies for treatment and intervention would be running dangerously low.

He'd acknowledged the request with but a nod, and Nemuri had promptly shown her the door.

That had been six weeks ago.

No one had seen him since.

* * *

Isane rises, wiping sweat from the side of her face with the back of a hand. This one is stable and sleeping, for now, and she instructs Hanataro to inform her immediately should anything change, and with that she takes her leave for the day.

It's not too far, Unohana's quarters. Rather, _her_ quarters now, given her position. Her captain had never liked to be too far removed from her duties, and Isane seems to have instilled that bit of the other woman into her own developing preferences. She had been tentative at first, moving her things into what had been her captain's living space. But, in the last several weeks, she has grown rather acclimated to the change, finding herself at ease.

Unohana had been very kind to her, though they had not been gifted the chance to become as close as Isane would have liked. But she knows with certainty that her captain would want her to make the most of the situation, and she is determined to honor that unspoken wish.

Turning the corner of the veranda just outside her door, she stops cold, heart in her throat when met with the sight of the Twelfth's captain, absent the haori and ghoulish paint, sitting in the very same place Isane had first caught sight of his true face.

If he's noticed her presence, he pays her no mind, staring off into the distance with a thousand-yard stare that could strip paint from a wall.

Isane gathers herself with a deep breath and approaches, sitting just off to the right where she had seen her captain some many months ago. She sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose, jumping when he breaks the silence.

"What _is_ the appeal of _lying,_ Captain Kotetsu?"

Blinking, she swallows around her nervousness, glancing at him with blatant confusion. _"Pardon?"_

"I find that the benefit of _being direct_ far outweighs any incurring consequences. Do you know why that is?"

"Um..." She doesn't get a chance to answer.

"What is, _is._ Science proves that, indisputably. It may appear cruel, calloused, but it is _honest and straightforward._ There are no gimmicks."

There is uncertainty in her heart, an inability to tell if he is genuinely lecturing her on the irrevocable truth of scientific fact, of what is, or if he's alluding to something else entirely. In her experience, he's quite the conniving manipulator himself, but Isane suspects that, somewhere in all this, there is a point to be made.

The greenhorn captain doesn't get a chance to ask for clarification.

He sighs, exasperated, still stares straight ahead, but tilts his head ever so slightly in her direction.

"You _still_ haven't figured it out?" A brief pause, saturated with her uncertainty and his growing impatience. "Retsu Unohana..." Her captain's name sounds strange passing through his lips. Almost... _reverent._ "...was a _goddamn liar_."

Hair on the nape of her neck stands on end, a hot flush crossing her cheeks in a short burst of fury.

Isane stands, hands balled into fists. How _dare_ he question Captain Unohana's integrity like this. After all she'd done for him, tending to his wounds - those seen and unseen - so often as she had.

 _"Do not speak that way about her."_ Her voice cracks, but she has Mayuri's full attention now, his eyes wide and focused on her efforts to restrain herself. She half expects him to begin mocking her, but it doesn't come. "Captain Unohana... gave herself to the Seireitei, wholeheartedly. She never... believed anyone to be too far gone! She worked tirelessly to save as many people as she could, and... f-for as long as I stand here as captain, in her place... _I will do the same...!"_

By the time Isane realizes she's crying, it's too late. This calculating, calloused bastard has been given an in, a means to manipulate and persecute her for an unprecedented amount of time, and she can't find it in herself to give a damn. There's no telling the extent of what their exchanges entailed, but Isane finds it maddening that he has the audacity to sit here and besmirch her captain's good name after all the kindness she had shown him.

She sits then, flustered, embarrassed, and infuriated by this man and everything that he is and that he stands for.

 _Honesty_ , he says. Had he even the briefest understanding of the concept, he'd have not said such things about Captain Unohana.

A series of short, quick breaths indicates to her that he'd been holding his, and Isane swears she hears him curse Unohana's name.

She stiffens, ready to give this man the talking to that none have ever dared when he breaks her rage into rubble:

"Apologies. That was... _uncalled for_."

Tongue catches in her throat, uncertain if she's heard him properly. By the time she's gathered enough of her thoughts to form a coherent sentence, he's already walking away, almost as if he'd said nothing and this whole exchange is _so beneath him_.

"You are only... the _second_ person with the audacity to challenge me this way," he says, and Isane turns just enough to catch a glimpse of a smirk upon his lips. Really, she's not sure it's even there. _"Don't get used to it."_

* * *

In the weeks and months that follow, a cautious ease settles throughout the Seireitei, with many of the Fourth's patients returning to their duties at a calm and steady pace. Walls rise again as they are rebuilt, a sense of normalcy ensues, and Captain Isane Kotetsu finds herself adjusting nicely to the new responsibilities her position now entails.

She wakes each morning, free of nightmares, wandering out onto the veranda to greet the sun and pay her respects to the beloved comrades taken by war.

On this day, she wakes earlier than usual and approaches a makeshift altar at the southeast end of her garden, spying the remnants of a lone thistle laid to rest at the stone's base. She has found a number of them before now, with little more than a suspicion as to their origin, for they do not grow in her garden.

"Good morning, Captain Kotetsu," a small voice says, and the captain turns to see the young research assistant respectfully bow her little head.

"Nemuri, good morning. What ever are you doing here so early?"

The girl shuffles uncomfortably, kicking up a bit of grass.

"Please pretend I was not here," she whispers, looking a bit sheepish. "My father- My captain _cannot_ know you saw me, or he will be very embarrassed."

Though a bit taken aback by the slip up - that of the girl referencing her captain and creator as her _father_ , and her apparent concern for his pride - Isane smiles gently, dropping to a knee to place a hand reassuringly on the child's shoulder.

"No need to worry. I won't say a word "

Surprisingly, Nemuri smiles broadly, and turns to scurry off around the far side of the building and out of sight.

Isane sighs thoughtfully, placing her own offering at the base of the altar, smiling still.

"You certainly _did_ have a way with people, Captain Unohana..."


End file.
